“The Drugs are in Control” by Sean Blake 2014
Welcome to the 21st Century. Any technology issue you have I promise there is an app for it. Any other problem there seems to be a drug for that. We live in a society where the prescription of psychoactive drugs is becoming an epoch on the annals of psychology. We have ads for SSRI’s on the television. A large percent of students cram stimulants into their mouths as part of cramming for an exam. Drug use and addiction are at an all-time high right here in the State of Vermont. Why is all this? It is the over prescription of these drugs and it is the over and false diagnosis’s of ADHD running through young adults and children.
“At many colleges across the country, the ingredients for academic success now include a steady flow of analeptics, the class of prescription amphetamines that is used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.”(1) ADHD is a disorder that is marked with significant problems of paying attention, hyperactivity, or acting impulsively. Its main drug treatment is a stimulant know by the brand name Adderall which mostly Dextroamphetamine (dexedrine) it is used to increase focus, memory, and intelligence. It makes you smarter. The number of people in North America on the Adderall and other drugs like Ritalin is astronomical in comparison to other countries. Putting kids on speed sounds like the job of terrorists or warlords not pharmaceutical companies. When I think of Amphetamines what comes to mind is Nazi tank driver, tweakers build stuff out of garbage and orgies. But now it seems almost the cool thing to do take an Adderall and go study for your exams.
The increase in the diagnosis of ADHD and ADD mark I believe mostly false diagnosis of kids trying to get on drugs to help them in school “As many as 20 percent of college students have used Ritalin or Adderall to study, write papers and take exams, according to recent surveys focused on individual campuses. A study released this month by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia found that the number of teenagers who admit to abusing prescription medications tripled from 1992 to 2003, while in the general population such abuse had doubled.”(1) This is a problem that stems much further than just college students trying to get ahead. The over prescription of many medications has lead to these drugs being more available for people to try and not only try but try again and maybe even get hooked on.
Right here in Vermont we are faced with the largest amount of opiate addiction ever from Gov Shumlin’s state address “In Vermont, since 2000, we have seen a more than 770% increase in treatment for all opiates.”(2) “What started as an Oxycontin and prescription drug addiction problem in Vermont has now grown into a full-blown heroin crisis.”(2) Oxycontin is a powerful painkiller that started being manufactured and prescribed to people with chronic pain. It works maybe a little too well and a street market of illegal trade of the drug took off in the suburban and rural America. No one is going to do heroin they teach us in health class how bad that is but heroin in pill form made by a lab was a social exception to the junkie realm of narcotics, needles and AIDS and William Burrows. The illegal drug trade of this very dangerous narcotic took off as more and more prescription were written so much so that the medication need to be adjusted to be impossible to smoke or crush and snort. That was in 2008 since then the number of people on heroin as skyrocketed. In my opinion it was cause of the removal of the street drug Oxycontin and the number of people that have now have used it maybe even got addicted to it have switch to that deadly thing that they would’ve never gone near when they tried Oxycontin.
SSRI use and SSRI prescriptions have been on the rise since the 1990s. If you have an eating disorder, If you have depression, if you’re an alcoholic, if your Bipolar then the first drug they will want to put you on is an SSRI. SSRI or serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitor acts like a cereal dispenser at a hotel’s continental breakfast. Imagine your serotonin is the cereal, there is a bowl waiting for cereal. That bowl is the space between your neurons. It is filled by the SSRI at certain times and not filled at certain times. The point is they regulate serotonin. Unlike MDMA (similar to Adderall) which is like would be like never ending cereal in that bowl or too much happy. SSRI’s make you just happy enough. I don’t believe they are the best treatment. For example May 1999 Archives of General Psychiatry, Andrew Stoll, M.D., used fish oil in a study of 30 manic-depressive patients. Sixty-four percent of them that took 10 grams of fish oil per day for four months showed improvement in their symptoms. (3) Similar studies include increase exercise can greatly reduce depression. It’s just another drug that is over prescribed and it’s a drug you maybe on for life same with Adderall and Oxcontin. Someone is making a lot of money of all this and we just have more drugs. More drug addicts and fewer solutions to big problems.
I don’t believe drugs are the answer to a lot of these cases. Some cases no doubt yes. All these drugs I mentioned above work, I just think there is a better answer I don’t know what it is but it’s out there and that’s what I’d like to see future psychiatrists and psychologists working on. New alternatives to medication because when you flood the country with drugs the results are not great as I stated above. Thank you for reading and I guess I’ll leave you with a question. Are the drugs in control?
Sources
- The Adderall Advantage By ANDREW JACOBS Published: July 31, 2005 The New York Times
- Shumlin’s 2014 State of the State Address
- May 1999 Archives of General Psychiatry
- http://www.hightimes.com/read/adderall-americas-favorite-amphetamine
for-kindness 